Dentist and CEO of Psynergy Mental Health, Ritesh Aggarwal, explains the importance of mental wellbeing in dentistry and offers some suggestions as to how to support this in practice.
Team wellbeing is the cornerstone of any business. If we think about a business, people will automatically focus on bottom line. However, bottom line is determined by the culture of your business. If you have a good culture in your practice, then your productivity will improve, and you’ll reduce the effects of poor mental health. You’ll create a happy, healthy, engaged team, which will increase productivity, which ultimately will improve your bottom line.
So, mental health and wellbeing is hugely important for those people who are purely focused on business analytics. But I believe it’s also more important from a human connection factor; from doing the right thing by your people and doing the right thing by yourself as a business owner. It allows you to feel good about the work and the services you are providing within your company.
There’s been a massive shift in attitude towards mental health and wellbeing over the last five years. COVID had a huge impact on people’s mental health and wellbeing, and it allowed many of us to reset our goals and maybe understand what’s important to us in our lives. Now, the mental health narrative is being talked a lot more, which is fantastic.
However, we are in danger of over-talking about it and not taking enough action. This is something known as wellbeing washing, which is a worry for me working in this space. But I think there’s been a huge shift in what people want from their lives. I believe it’s not just about the dentistry anymore. It’s about feeling happy. It’s also about addressing those problems that we have such as perfectionism and compassion fatigue and all those things that come with poor mental health. There’s been an important shift now towards looking after ourselves and realising the importance of that.
Returning to the subject of productivity, if we’re mentally healthy, then our performance improves, and that gives us an enormous sense of achievement. So, I think more people now, and especially younger practitioners, are attuned to this situation. When I qualified in the late 1990s, we didn’t speak about mental health and wellbeing. It just wasn’t a topic of discussion. It was a case of ‘crack on, do your dentistry and do whatever you need to do to get through.’ So, I welcome the change with regards to the availability of courses and so on. There are a lot now out there on leadership and wellbeing and I think that’s a welcome move. The focus is not all just about the clinical skills because focusing just on the clinical skills leads to things like perfectionism, which causes issues for us as practitioners.
Before deciding what kind of support would be helpful in your practice you first need to gain an understanding of what’s happening amongst your entire team, including the Principal. Having resources that allow you to capture that data, so you have a full picture of what is happening is crucial. Once you’ve gained clarity on this, you’re then in a position to act upon it together as a practice. The word ‘together’ here is vital. It’s not about the practice Principal having to make or implement all the changes to try to make the practice a better place. It’s about the whole team coming together to create changes and implement them together to make the practice a better place.
However, without understanding what is happening, where would you start? You could do appraisals, and you may get some honesty, then again, you may not. So, capturing high quality data is important. Once you have that data, acting upon it and then constantly having open, honest communication to build psychological safety amongst all the team members is crucial to carrying that forward and building that culture on a wider level.
Sometimes, principals can get lost in what they think is best for the practice, but that’s not the best way. Often, the wider team of the Practice Manager, the nurses, the receptionist, and so on, will give more valuable insights. As dentists we can agree that if our team members are happy, it makes our job so much easier.
At Psynergy Mental Health, we’ve devised our own platform for dental practices to help capture this data. In my own practice, once a year we run an extensive mental health and wellbeing questionnaire based around the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) management standards, capturing data across five key categories. These are: your job roles and demands, the workplace environment itself, your relationships at work and the support given to people at work, and your own personal wellbeing.
This questionnaire is extensive and runs to about 110 questions. With it we’re measuring mental health and wellbeing. We’re trying to understand what is happening by having that data. By having the data come into an automated system that just compiles all the results instantaneously, I have at my fingertips a full picture of what’s happening.
We also gather qualitative data. Although the platform is anonymised, my practice is quite small. As there are only six people working in my practice, I’m going to know who’s typed what. However, I’ve set the scene for everyone before I even embarked upon it. I want people to be honest. The only way we’re going to be able to move forward is through openness and honesty.
When I have the data, we address immediate concerns. We then build an action plan to address medium term concerns and then a long-term action plan as well. At Psynergy Mental Health we provide a resource to every individual that uses the platform so they can monitor and maintain their own mental health and wellbeing as well as a resource for the Practice Owner or Practice Manager so they can then make business decisions that are very easy to implement. It allows them to start creating this cultural shift towards a more positive direction.
So, however you decide to capture it, capturing good high-quality data is important. Which is why utilising one of these platforms is essential if you want to get a full picture of your team’s wellbeing. Once you have that, you can make the improvements your team needs.
About Ritesh
Ritesh Aggarwal is a practicing Dentist, Practice Principal and the CEO of Psynergy Mental Health. He has been working within the mental health industry since 2017 and has a strong drive and determination to improve mental health for all.
Ritesh wants to improve the dental industry by implementing Psynergy programmes via their digital platform to measure the mental health and wellbeing culture of dental practices, creating action plans for improvement and inspiring positive, long term behaviour change for the benefit of all within the practice.